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Taliban attack damages US military chief’s aircraft

Taliban militants today fired rockets and damaged the special aircraft of the top most US military commander in Afghanistan's highly secure Bagram air base, but General Martin Dempsey escaped as he was not in the plane.

The rockets uprooted the main door of the C-17 aircraft usedby the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, wounding two maintenanceofficers and also damaging an Apache helicopter gunship parked nearby, the ABCnews reported quoting Pentagon officials.

A US military spokesman, Jamie Graybeal, told reporters thatthe shrapnel from the rockets struck the door of the plane, injuring twoworkers.

But the rockets posed no threat to the safety of Dempsey orhis entourage who were asleep in their quarters at the time of the attack inthe early hours of the morning.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibilityfor the attack, saying Dempsey's aircraft was "specifically targetted onexact information."

Dempsey was on a crucial visit to Afghanistan to meetcommanders of the NATO forces and Afghan top brass to discuss the recent surgein attacks by Afghan security personnel on their international colleague.

A total of 10 NATO soldiers have lost their lives in attacksbilled as "green on blue" in the past two weeks.

A spokesman for the NATO's International Security AssistanceForce (ISAF) said that "Dempsey was nowhere in sight when the attacks tookplace."

The American commander later left Kabul in another C-17plane.

"Indirect fire is not uncommon at Bagram and there isabsolutely no indication that the attack was specifically targetting theplane," the spokesman added.

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Obama cancelled three missions to kill bin Laden until Clinton stepped in: book

US President Barack Obama put off three times operations to kill world's most dreaded terrorist Osama bin Laden before finally going ahead with the mission at the insistence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a new book has claimed.

AFP
Published Aug 21, 2012, 1:33 PM IST
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Citing unnamed sources within the joint operations command,Rich Miniter, a former 'Wall Street Journal' and 'Washington Times' reporter,claims that three 'kill' missions were called off by Obama in January, Februaryand March 2011.Bin Laden was killed by US Navy SEALs inside his compound inAbbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011.The president feared that the daring Navy SEALs operation toraid bin Laden's Pakistani hideout in Abbottabad "might go tragically wrong"and he would be…

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